


Through the Years

by enigmaticdr



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, birthday fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 22:48:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10174166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticdr/pseuds/enigmaticdr
Summary: A list of Scully’s birthdays from s1 through to s10. Some happy, some angsty, some NSFW - some all three





	

**I. One**

Their first year, it is just how she wants it to be: a complete non-event.

They are sitting in the office completing paperwork, ink stains tattooed onto their fingers and paper clips scattered across their respective tabletops like branches strewn about after a storm. 

The clock ticks diligently away, bringing them closer to 5 p.m. with every passing moment. Her coffee mug is empty and so is Mulder’s pizza box, shoved over to the top corner of his desk. She has almost grown accustomed to the slight whistle his nose makes when he doesn’t breathe through his mouth.  

When the shrill ring of the telephone cuts through the silence, she jumps nearly two feet out of her skin. Mulder gives her a teasing grin before answering, marking his place on his page with a sticky note.

“Mulder,” he says into the receiver. A pause, and then: “Just a moment.”

He stands and holds the phone out to her, the stretchy black cord wrapped around his arm, and mouths “It’s for you.”

She gets up and he meets her halfway, placing his warm hand on the small of her back as he hands her the phone. The subtle scent of his aftershave floats lightly around her shoulders. 

This is something she has noticed about Mulder, his almost compulsive need to touch all things - from unidentifiable substances at crime scenes to her hair, her shoulders, the small of her back when he walks behind her up the stairs.

Melissa had told her to tell him to fuck off, but Scully won’t. It’s been almost a year of working together, and she knows Mulder isn’t like that. It’s not him coming onto her, but more so his need to be sure of her. He has been betrayed too many times, this man, she suspects. She had told her sister as much, and Melissa had just shaken her head with a crafty smile like she knew exactly where this was headed.

Scully takes the phone and leans against the side of his desk.

It is her mother, calling to ask her if she needs a ride to the birthday dinner tonight, telling her to come at seven and warning her not to be late.

Mulder looks at her as she hangs up the phone. “What’s up, Scully?” he asks, picking his pen back up and brushing some pizza crumbs off his desk. “Hot date on a Wednesday night?”

“Funny,” she tells him, trying to ignore the slight blush coloring her cheeks. “It’s nothing,” she answers, sitting back down at her table in the corner. “Just my mom.”

“Oh,” he says absently, and goes back to his paperwork. “Tell her I said hi.”

* * *

**II. Two**

When she gets to home to her apartment that night, Patrick is already there, busily cooking in the kitchen.

“Hey, you’re back early,” he says, and sets down the spatula to come a greet her. He gestures behind him, to the mess spread across the counter. “Stir fry - just what the birthday girl ordered.”

The kitchen smells good but she doesn’t have to heart to tell him all she wants right now is to take a nice warm shower, fuck, and go to sleep. It’s been a long day of chasing nothing around in circles with Mulder. 

She steadfastly ignores the voice in the back of her head that asks why it is that chasing things around with Mulder makes her want to fuck.

“Smells good,” she tells him. “Thanks.”

“Good day?” he asks, taking her coat and her briefcase and placing them on the table in her entryway.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “Long.”

“Well I’m almost done with dinner,” he tells her. “I picked up a cake from that place down the block.”

“I’m gonna go shower,” she tells him, cupping his cheek and then stealing away to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Patrick is nice, but that’s really it. Nice. A nice guy. A safe guy. He doesn’t ditch her. He doesn’t argue with her. He doesn’t challenge her. He doesn’t thrill her.

She wonders when it started that every man who came into her life was automatically held against Mulder in comparison.

She peels her blouse off and realizes that it smells like Mulder’s cologne. Hours spent driving in a car with someone can do this, she knows. She throws the shirt in the hamper and scrubs herself off in the shower.

She breaks up with Patrick three weeks later, when Donnie Pfaster makes it impossible for her to sleep with any of the lights off.

* * *

**III. Three**

She never expected to spend her 32nd birthday locked in a room with a madman, a gun, and a partner who was pointing said gun in her direction. Once it is happening, she can’t really see a way for both of them to make it out alive. And it breaks her heart, seeing Mulder like that.

So when they both do, indeed, make it out alive, her brain is so frazzled by trying to process the whole situation that she can only stand there and stare as they wheel Modell’s body out of the room. The Pusher. One round, fired squarely into his chest, at point blank range.

Mulder waits for the hospital room to clear before storming out, brushing past her and taking long strides down the hall to the men’s washroom. The door slams behind him, and a moment later she hears the distinct sound of his fist punching into the metal stall wall.

She knocks twice before cautiously pushing the door open. “Mulder?” she calls, “It’s me.”

There isn’t a response but she wasn’t expecting one anyways and so she slips into the room, flicking the lock into place behind her.

Mulder is by the sink, leaning his weight on the porcelain and staring at his reflection in the mirror. The knuckles on his right hand are scraped and blood oozes slowly from the cuts.

“It’s over,” she tells him. “We got him.”

“I almost killed you,” he says, meeting her eyes in the mirror. His pupils are blown huge and dark.

“You didn’t,” she says simply, leaning back against the concrete wall behind her.

“I was going to,” he says, and squeezes his eyes shut. “Damnit!” he explodes, yelling at the mirror. “I told you what he was like,” he shouts, “that was too risky following me in there and you know it,” he chastises.

“I’m your partner, Mulder,” she replies, “not a civilian. I knew what I was doing.”

“You took an unnecessary risk, Scully.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘thank you’.”

He meets her gaze in the mirror, staring hard into her face. She expects him to fight, braces herself for his angry words, but instead he just bows his head and threads his fingers through his hair, elbows resting on the edges of the sink.

“You came after me - you came -” he breathes, and suddenly all the anger in the room is gone. She steps forward and places her hand on his back, rubbing gently in circles.

“Of course I did,” she whispers, soothing him. “Of course I did, Mulder. I’m your partner.”

He grabs her hand with his bloody one, and holds it tight.

That night, she cancels her birthday plans with her mother and they eat a quiet dinner in his kitchen, by the dim light of the television.

* * *

**V. Four**

She is happy.

They haven’t fought in nearly a week and the tension is finally starting to diffuse. The memories of their last explosive argument are becoming numb in her mind, soft around the edges, and she feels like they are finally moving forward.

Mulder has remembered her birthday this year, and there’s a cupcake in her belly, an Apollo 11 keychain on her keyring, and her face is warmed slightly by the beers he ordered them at the pub.

Back at the motel, he knocks on the adjoining door.

“Wanna watch a movie?” he asks, leaning against the door frame.

She looks up from the casefile in front of her. She takes off her reading glasses so she can see him better. “Well Mulder, that depends what you mean by ‘a movie’.”

“Ha ha, Scully,” he says sarcastically, crossing his arms. “Sorry, but they don’t get those channels here. And besides, I wouldn’t dream of corrupting you. Not on your birthday.”

“You corrupted me years ago, Mulder,” she retorts, but she closes the casefile and gets up, turning to pull the comforter back into perfect position. “Let’s go to yours, I don’t want you messing up my sheets.”

Two hours later, the credits roll on the small square screen in Mulder’s room. Scully is curled beside him, fast asleep. Her head leans heavily against his shoulder and her knees are pressed snugly against his thigh, body molded warmly against his.

He turns the television off and the room is engulfed by darkness. Mulder shifts on the mattress and moves them both to lying down.

Scully shifts against him, tucking her head under his chin. “Mulder,” she mumbles, half asleep.

“Yeah?” he answers, pulling the blankets up over her and tucking them snugly over her shoulders.

“I had a nice birthday,” she tells him, burrowing under the covers. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad,” he says, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her face quickly relaxes back into sleep.

“Goodnight, Scully,” he whispers, tracing his finger gently over that spot on her nose that he now knows holds something dark and malignant and terrifying. He slips quietly out of the bed and crosses to the other side of the room, stretching out on the motel couch.

When the tears trickle from his eyes, she does not see them.

* * *

**V. Five**

“Thanks, Mulder, but I don’t really feel up to it,” she tells him when he asks if he can take her to dinner.

“Plans with your family?” he asks casually, tapping his pencil against his desk.

“Oh, God, no.” She shakes her head, filling up her coffee cup at their little snack station in the corner. “I’d be surprised if they ever wanted to celebrate something with me ever again. Not after Christmas.”

It is meant as a joke but suddenly the room is very silent and the air feels thick.

“Anyway,” she continues, clearing her throat, “I have a date. With my bathtub and a glass of good wine.”

“Ooh, Scully, walking on the wild side,” he teases, but his heart isn’t in it. It’s difficult, when his mind is 2,600 miles away in San Diego, where a little girl is buried. He knows she doesn’t feel like celebrating.

“That’s okay,” he pushes on, trying for lightheartedness. “I’ll probably just hit the gym or something,” he says, flexing his biceps and waggling his eyebrows.  

“Hmm,” she responds, placing her coffee cup on her desk. She clears her throat again. “Excuse me,” she says, and turns and walks out of the office, her heels clunking against the carpet floor of the hallway. He hears the squeaky door of the bathroom open and close.

It is twelve minutes before she comes back, face suspiciously devoid of mascara.

She meets his gaze resolutely, almost daring him to say anything. Wisely, he stays silent.

“You got that report?” she asks, all business.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah,” he says, reaching for it in his desk drawer.

* * *

**VI. Six**

He shows up at her apartment around 6 p.m.,takes her out for a proper dinner, and walks her home afterwards, their fingers casually intertwined.

She is still on forced medical leave from the gunshot wound to her abdomen, but they both know that she has never been healthier. They both choose to ignore this fact.

They linger in the doorway of her apartment and she thinks she would like it if he kissed her right now, if he pressed his full bottom lip to hers. She holds out her hand and invites him in, not really knowing what she wants but willing to try and figure it out.

They make coffee even though it is ten p.m. and when Mulder stands up to leave, stretching his arms above his head and reaching for his coat, she takes the plunge before her rational mind can talk her out of it.

She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses his cheek, his neck, the underside of his chin, opening the door to something, inviting him to reciprocate. His arms settle at her waist and he moves gently to rub his thumb across the puckered scar on her stomach. It has been a good year for them. She is happy and she wants to share her joy with him.

“Scully,” he whispers, cupping the back of her skull in his large palm and pressing his lips to her forehead. Her face tucks against his chest and he touches his lips to the top of her head, inhaling the sweet scent of her hair. His arms fold around her body, appreciating it’s warmth, appreciating the softness of her.

She tilts her face up and he slowly - so slowly - lowers his head to touch his lips to hers. It is a barely-there kiss, just the lightest pressure of his mouth against hers. He pulls back and tilts his head to the other side, pressing his mouth to hers again, slightly harder this time. She feels the pressure of him against her teeth.

The next time he pulls away she follows his mouth with hers as far as she can, until he is too tall and their mouths separate with a soft popping sound.

“Scully,” he says again, and tucks her short hair behind her ear.

“It’s okay,” she tells him, her hand pressed to his chest, over his heart. “Let’s just go slow.”

He looks at her with an expression she has never seen before but there is wonderment in his eyes and a smile on his lips when she walks him towards the front door. They hold hands until the heavy wooden door necessitates letting go.

“Goodnight, Mulder,” she murmurs.

“Happy birthday, Scully,” he says, and then turns to walk down the hall.

Her heart beats quickly as a schoolgirl’s inside her chest as she pulls back the curtain in her living room to watch him walk to his car. He turns and waves to her before driving away.

Three months later, Diana Fowley storms back into their lives like a hurricane.

* * *

**VII. Seven**

It is well past midnight and they are lying tangled in his sheets at his apartment, buzzed from wine and high off each other’s electric touch.

He kisses the bullet scar on his way down her naked body. He makes lame jokes but she laughs anyways and scratches her nails down his back to grip his ass in encouragement.

He buries his face in her neck and she moans, watching the perfect image of them reflected back at her from the mirror above his bed.

“Mulder,” she breathes, tightening her hands in his hair, breathing accelerating.  

“What, baby?” he murmurs, his mouth pressed to her skin.

“Do you know what I want to try?” she whispers, and reaches over for her pants pooled on the floor beside the bed, deftly unclipping her handcuffs from the belt loop.

He erupts into guffaws at the cliche of it, burying his face in her hair. “In trouble with the law on your birthday? How unfortunate,” he mumbles teasingly, kissing her neck.

“Well?” she asks, rubbing her foot up his calf.

“You’re serious?” he responds, lifting his head and raising his eyebrows. She nods slowly, biting her lip.

“Scully,” and suddenly he is the serious one, the laughter gone from his voice. “You don’t need to prove anything to me.”

She knows what he is thinking of: he is remembering the nights after Donnie Pfaster broke into her apartment. He is remembering a few weeks ago when she panicked when he’d held her wrists together during sex, telling him she never wanted to be tied down again.

She remembers that look in his eyes.

“I know,” she says. “I’m not. I want you to,” she tells him, tilting her pelvis to rub against his stomach. “Come on.”

He takes them from her hands. She feels her heartbeat quicken as he holds them, and tries to convince herself it is from arousal rather than fear. She can do it. She can. She can be normal for him.

“Scully,” he tells her, meeting her eyes. “I love you.” He places the cuffs on the bedside table, and slips his arms under her back to cup her skull. “I love you just like this,” he murmurs against her mouth. “This is all I’ll ever need.”

She sniffs, and swallows harshly.

“Okay?” he asks, pushing up onto his elbows to meet her gaze.

“Okay,” she whispers, wraps her arms around his neck.

“Hey, no crying on your birthday.”

She chuckles on a sob and wipes her eyes with her hands. “I love you, Mulder. I don’t say it enough.”

“You tell me all the time,” he answers, and reaches down to touch her. He circles the pads of his fingers on her clit and her toes curl, digging into the sheets beside his legs. He bows his head to pull a nipple into his mouth and circles his tongue around it, wetting it with his saliva.

“I want you,” she tells him, and pulls his hand away, replacing it with hers to guide his cock where she needs it most. He presses his mouth to hers as he presses his penis between her legs, and she breaks the kiss on a moan when he finally stills, buried to the hilt inside her.

“Okay?” he asks in a stained voice, reaching down to hook his hand behind her knee, pulling it up over his hip to open her wider.

“Yeah. Oh, god, please move,” she whispers desperately, tilting her hips up toward him.

And when he rocks against her, slow and languid at first and then hard and fast, she closes her eyes and thinks that this is where she wants to stay forever, in his arms like this, more loved than she has ever been.

* * *

**VIII. Eight**

She sits on the floor of her shower, cold droplets of water dripping from her hair and onto the taut roundness of her belly. In the stark light from the bathroom ceiling, her stomach seems impossibly large, extended in front of her, little silver rivulets of stretch marks webbed across her hips.

She has been sitting here for seconds, minutes, hours. When the water had gotten too cold to stand she had reached over and turned it off, lying back and listening to the hypnotizing sound of the drip, drip, drip from the nozzle.

She shivers and leans her head against the tiled wall, closing her eyes against the recurring, incessant images of Mulder’s casket being lowered deeper and deeper into the ground that have haunted her dreams for days.

She curls her arms around her stomach. Somewhere in the back of her mind she is conscious of the fact that her mother would freak out if she saw her daughter like this. Her mother, who had offered to come over tonight with some cake, who had suggested a nice home-cooked birthday dinner and a movie, was not going to show up, she knew. Not after Scully had, less than kindly, told her mother she did not feel like celebrating.

She is suddenly aware of wanting her sister, desperately.

And then a tiny kick. And another. She looks down at her stomach and watches the skin ripple slightly with her baby’s movements. She raises her hand and presses back, caressing her palm over a tiny foot or elbow.

She inhales long and slow, closing her eyes, concentrating on the feel of her son moving within her. Concentrating on the feel of something partly Mulder moving inside her, safe. Hers. Theirs.

“Okay,” she finally murmurs, and her voice echoes slightly against the wet walls of the shower stall. “Okay, baby.”

Slowly, she shifts to her knees and then gingerly clambers to her feet. Her knees are stiff and the pattern of the tiles is etched into the soft skin of her thighs.

She wraps her robe around herself and makes it to her bed before curling under the heavy comforter and sleeping well into the afternoon the next day.   
  


“I’m fine,” she says, when her mother calls her the next day.

* * *

**IX. Nine**

She stands in the kitchen in her bathrobe, stirring together a mixture of pureed carrots with the soft little rubber spoon she uses to feed William. Her baby gurgles happily from his high chair beside her, his excitement mounting until he releases a series of high pitched squeals, his chubby fists thumping against his tray.

“Okay, Greedy,” she soothes him with a smile, sitting down on a chair in front of him, and reaching to tie his bib around his neck. William grins and kicks his feet, eyes glued to the small jar of food.

“You hungry?” she asks, smiling at him, dipping the spoon into the puree. “Are you a hungry boy?”

From the living room, her computer dings an alert for a new message in her inbox.

She sets the food down on the dining table. “Just a second, sweetheart,” she tells him, walking quickly to her laptop. She opens her email and there it is, in her inbox, the message she’s been yearning for, hoping for all day. The excitement courses through her body in waves as she clicks on the bolded header.

_Dana,_

_I am thinking of you always, but most especially today. Happy birthday. You are a wonderful woman and an amazing mother._

_I wish I could see you to tell you in person how much you mean to me._

_I miss you. I love you, so much. Tell William I love him too._

_Me._

A brilliant smile breaks across her face. “Look, baby,” she turns to William and points to the screen. “It’s a letter from Daddy,” she sniffs, and fat tears leave dots on her dark robe as they fall.

She hits “print” on the computer and waits for the printer to spit out the paper, before retrieving it and going back to sit beside William. “See?” she holds it out to him and he gurgles, smudging the corner of the sheet with his chubby, drool-covered fingers.

She kisses his downy head and folds the paper, holding it against her heart.

“Daddy says he loves you, sweet boy,” she murmurs to him, picking up his food again. “Mama and Daddy love you so much.”

“Da,” William says, “Da, da, da, da.”

“That’s it,” she encourages him, laughing. “Dada.” She holds the spoon to his lips.

William opens his mouth and sucks up the mashed carrots from the spoon, only to drool most of it right back onto his bib.

It is not a perfect birthday, and she prays every night for God to bring Mulder back to her. But when she lies in her bed that night, William sleeping cuddled in beside her, and Mulder’s letter tucked under her pillow, she feels something akin to the happiness she used to know glow warmly in her chest.

* * *

**X. Post The-Truth**

It has been eleven months since they ran. Eleven months since they took off in the big black SUV, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a paper bag full of cash, and two sleeping bags zipped together in the back seat.

Eleven months of scarce meals, restless sleeps, and miles and miles and miles of road.

In another anonymous, dingy motel, he cries out and spends himself inside her, pushed as deep within her as he’s ever been. He relaxes, panting, pressing his body warmly to hers, his grip on her thighs loosening.

She lowers her legs and gives him a small push, palms pressed to his chest. He kisses her neck before complying, rolling off of her. She lies on the bed, naked, sore, breathing hard. Mulder lies beside her, turned away, trying to regulate his breathing, the sweat glistening on his back.

The ceiling fan above them turns, turns, turns, and she makes herself dizzy staring at it.

Every muscle in her body is tired. The twinge between her legs is nothing compared to the hole gouged in her heart.

He tries to understand, he thinks he understands, but he does not. He cannot. And she resents him for it.

The corners of her eyes are sticky with something - maybe tears, maybe his kisses. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care.

Mulder pushes himself up and sits on the side of the bed, pulling on his boxers, before walking to the adjoining bathroom and locking the door behind him. It is only a few seconds before the sound of the shower water hitting the tiled floor drowns out all other sounds.  

She turns to look at the digital clock. It feels like it has been minutes, hours, weeks since they have spoken. Even longer since they have spoken nicely.

She presses her thighs together and folds her arms around herself.

The clock strikes midnight and the date on the old clock flicks. March 21st. She remembers, nearly a month late, that she is now 39 years old. She doesn’t care.

Her baby boy will turn 2 years old in exactly two month’s time.

She feels numb.

* * *

**XI. I Want to Believe**

When she wakes up in the morning he is pressed behind her, his leg thrown casually over hers and his face smushed into her pillow. They have migrated throughout the night, so that she is curled on the very edge of the mattress and he is stretched across the remaining expanse. No matter the circumstances, one thing has always remained constant: Mulder is a bedhog.

She stretches, her elbows and knees cracking. She is getting old.

“Mulder,” she whispers, and turns around to face him, gently attempting to push him back onto his side of the bed. “I’m gonna go make coffee.”

“Mmmmhmm,” he groans, tightening his arms around her and rolling to the side, taking her with him and trapping her under his sleep-warmed body.

“Mulder!”

“Sorry,” he jokes with a grin, kissing down her neck and into her cleavage, and he really isn’t sorry at all. “Can’t let the birthday girl leave this bed yet.”

“Oh really?” she giggles into his hair. “Well, that’s a shame, I had something fun planned.”

“So do I,” he says, and she lifts her arms willingly as he pulls her t-shirt up and over her head. He takes a nipple in his hot mouth and she sighs contentedly, scratching her nails through his hair.

“That’s nice,” she tells him, and he reaches up with his other hand to palm her other breast. He hums in response, caressing her skin with his mouth.

“I have the morning off,” she tells him, eyes closed. “Hospital doesn’t need me ‘till twelve.” He looks up and flashes her a pleased grin before continuing his journey south.

“How fortunate,” he mumbles against her skin, kissing across her hipbone. His fingers tickle up the inside of her thigh and she bites her lip in anticipation. “That gives us what, four hours? I hope I can manage to get the job done.”

She laughs aloud and playfully thwacks her hand against the back of his head. “Shut the fuck up, Mulder.”

“Mmm, yes ma’am. Happy birthday, Scully.” And then he puts his mouth to better use.

* * *

**XIII. Ten**

“Stay,” she tells him, carefully, quietly. The house is dark except for the flickering glow of the candles on the dining table. The delicate silver chain he’d gifted her hangs around her neck and the tablecloth and napkin set he’d found in an antique shop is folded neatly on the chair beside her, cheesy Mulder-esque birthday card on top.

The wine glasses are empty and in this moment it suddenly feels so right to have him here, in her space, his shoes by the door and his scent permeating the air. She wants it everywhere, on her clothes, on her sheets, in her life.

“What?” he asks, turning back to where she is still seated at the table, the leftovers of their shared dinner spread out before her. He pauses with his coat slung over his arm. She looks at him, this man who is clean shaven and trying so hard for her.

“I said,” she replies, standing up and coming to stand in front of him, close enough to feel the warmth coming off him in waves, “Stay.”

She reaches out and threads her fingers through his, tightening her grip around his hands.

“Scully,” he says, and closes his eyes, lowering his head and biting lip. “Please don’t ask me to stay if it’s only for tonight. I can’t do that.”

Leaving is hardest the second time around, this they both know.

“I’m not,” she whispers, with quiet assurance, stepping closer and placing her palms on his face, cupping his cheeks.

“Don’t jerk me around, Scully,” he murmurs roughly, voice cracking. For all the times he’d allowed himself to dream in the past, no matter how much he wants to believe, he knows that false hope can pick you up and drop you down harder than anything else.

“I mean stay, Mulder,” she tells him, and waits for him to open his eyes and meet her gaze. “ _Really_ stay.”

And he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
